


you’re an upstanding model of the modern day cain

by choirboyharem



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Child Abuse, Jealousy, M/M, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sibling Incest, Twincest, another very original ‘jeremiah grew up with jerome in the circus’ au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-23 16:10:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18154085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/choirboyharem/pseuds/choirboyharem
Summary: Jeremiah is trying to read a book, but the girl he hates—the one he doesn’t know the name of yet—keeps cutting through his concentration.





	you’re an upstanding model of the modern day cain

**Author's Note:**

> i don’t even know what to tag this with other than ‘weird, creepy, and way out of line’. it does contain sexual assault, though, so fair warning on that. the title is from modern day cain by idkhow because it makes me think of them _so much._

Jeremiah has been trying to read a book for an hour now on a blanket against their caravan. He’s only six pages in and he doesn’t remember what was on those pages in the first place. He keeps getting distracted by high-pitched giggling and a sugary voice through cheap lipstick. 

It’s August and it’s eighty-two degrees at six-thirty P.M. Jeremiah is sweating, stubbornly, in a button-down with the sleeves rolled up and he can feel the beads of moisture on his face and down his back. His hair is limp. He looks as horrible as he feels. And Jerome is sitting on a cart next to a girl he’d essentially kidnapped from the departing crowd when the afternoon show had ended. He’s putting on a hell of a show of his own tonight, acting the part of a quiet, sensitive loner who’s surprisingly charming and very interesting to talk to because he’s intelligent and well-read. 

It obviously works very well on shallow, small-town whores. What also works is Jerome’s sleeveless shirt and torn jeans, looking far too casual than usual because their mother burned most of his clothes a few nights ago. (She hadn’t meant to, she was drunk and Jerome was aggravating her, it wasn’t her fault. There were. . . several contributing factors.) Jerome’s hair is also out of place because he keeps messing with it. It’s obviously his character's quirk. His character messes with his hair and bites his lip as a nervous tick, because he’s nervous around pretty girls. Pretty whores. He’s probably a virgin. But he’s also cool and hardened and he gets to show off muscles he’s earned from years of hard labor. Sweat rolls down his forehead and Jeremiah watches him brush it away. 

“It won’t be a problem if I take my shirt off, will it?” Jerome asks the whore as Jeremiah immediately drops his head, fingers twisting around a lock of hair as he reads and rereads the first sentence on his current page. His face is burning and so is the side of his head, because he knows Jerome is staring holes into it. It’s not safe to look up. Not yet. 

Jeremiah does, eventually, because the whore says “Oh, wow—so many freckles” and giggles again like she’s a gas leak and that’s the only thing that’s coming out of her. Jerome is too busy laughing softly and pretending to be embarrassed to notice when Jeremiah looks up again. Jerome has soft but definitive outlines of round muscles, toned and almost sort of elegant. He and Jeremiah share the same kind of body type, but Jeremiah doesn’t work as nearly as much. He’s a scholar. He’s nearly a genius. He doesn’t have to. 

But Jerome is different and a drop of sweat slides down his chest and catches on his nipple. Jeremiah swallows and bends his head into his book, watching Jerome out of the corner of his eye. He’s keeping tabs.

”The sunshine does a lot for me,” Jerome tells the whore, stretching his arms, acting like he has absolutely no idea what he’s doing and Jeremiah is going to pull his own fucking hair out. He feels his breathing get a little short and a familiar sickness twisting his stomach and heart. He flips another page of his book. 

Their sixteenth birthday was last week and that's all he can think about. The only one who remembered was them. Their mother was out and she was busy; it happens all the time and Jeremiah isn’t upset, but he has to think at least someone could’ve given them a cake. The Graysons always get a cake. Most of the performers do, actually. But that’s not the point. Jeremiah has been forced to suffer through not only puberty over the past few years, but an idiotic sexuality crisis. It’s a petty thing, but that’s another reason he thinks he hates Jerome for: Jerome has always been positive about who he is. Even if he’s a degenerate, violent maniac who openly mocks and despises their loving mother, decapitates birds and rats, spits at people, threatens to kill or at least greatly injure them, does everything he can to repulse them and make them uncomfortable—he knows who he is and what he likes. 

_"Here’s what I’m gonna do,” Jerome whispered in Jeremiah’s ear, fingers splayed over the lines of Jeremiah’s back. “I’m gonna hunt down some little Christian Daddy’s girl after a show and take her back here when Mom’s out. I’m gonna fuck her, and you’re gonna watch. I’m gonna make her take it like a bitch so you learn what you’re good for.”_

_Jeremiah shut his eyes. "Can we please just have a drink?"_

“I’m sorry, uh—did I ever catch your name?” Jerome asks the whore, laughing again. It’s not his real laugh. It’s not even his fake real laugh. “I’m sorry I never asked.”

The whore smiles at him. “Angelina.”

Jeremiah false-gags into his book, gripping it tightly. She sounds like a good-for-nothing, airheaded trapeze artist in the making who will grow up to flaunt her legs and light children’s hair on fire when her incestuous clique of a family doesn’t give her enough attention. _Angelina_. Gross.

“Angelina.” Jerome says it like he’s amused by it. (Maybe he thinks the same thing.) Jeremiah dares to look back up at him and he feels like throwing up because Jerome has his hand in Angelina’s hair. She looks smitten. She doesn’t even know him. How desperate is she? “Sounds like a fairytale.”

Jeremiah wants to throw his book at Jerome’s stupid, fake head. Jerome doesn’t know what a fairytale is. The only Disney movie they’ve ever seen is Snow White on a projector and he wouldn’t understand the Grimm Brothers if he tried because Jerome doesn’t fucking read books. Jeremiah hates him. He hates him. He hates him for doing this with a shallow, candy-coated slut with cocksucking lips and empty doe eyes.

“You know what, Angelina. . .” Jerome pushes Angelia’s rat hair behind her ear. “I’ve—I’ve never been kissed before. I turned sixteen last week. Sweet sixteen, never been kissed. I’ve never been to a dance before. No nothing.”

Jeremiah throws his book down, rage so sick and intense that he can’t see anything but red. “That’s a lie,” he says, his voice trembling like it always does and like Jerome’s always doesn’t. “Stop lying to her.”

If Jerome could arrange his facial features any more perfectly into polite confusion, he’d be a golden retriever. Angelina looks alarmed. “Jeremiah, why would I lie about that?” Jerome asks, sounding so convincingly, infuriatingly hurt that all Jeremiah wants to do is choke him. “That wouldn’t make any sense, would it?”

“I know what you’re doing and it’s not working,” Jeremiah forces out through his closed throat and teeth. “You’re despicable. How could you do that to—t-to a girl like this?” There’s so much more he needs to say but nothing that he can. Not with anyone else in earshot.

“What?” Angelina's head turns from Jeremiah to Jerome, the picture of befuddlement. “What’s he talking about?”

“You’ll have to excuse my little brother; he’s off his pills tonight. He was supposed to wait in the caravan for my mother, but she's. . . late tonight," Jerome says, small and vulnerable, lip trembling just enough to make it picture-perfect. "Allison, why don't we go on a walk?"

Dread fills Jeremiah and makes him heavy. "Don't listen to him," he insists to Allison, because even if she is a whore, he doesn't really want Jerome to kill her and he knows Jerome might kill her if he leads her away. He wants to protect her. He's a good person. "He'll cut your body up. He's a psychopath. He kills things because he likes it. He's a sick, perverted, criminally-insane idiot who—"

"Miah, why don't you go to bed?" Jerome says, his eyes flashing at Jeremiah. He cracks underneath the surface for the first time tonight. "Don't listen to him, he's completely mentally impaired, he makes up stories and believes them, it's all in his mind. He's upset that our mother isn't here." He jumps off the cart, throws his shirt back on, and holds his hand out for Allison to take. "A walk? Just until it gets dark? Please?" 

She seems to have a few more reservations, but she does eventually accept his hand and climb down. He smiles at her, looking grateful. "Thanks, I really needed the company." He glances over his shoulder at Jeremiah, licking his lips before leading Allison away, twirling her on the spot and making her gasp and giggle. Reservations gone. She's very shallow.

"It's Angelina," Jeremiah hears her say. "Not Allison." 

"Yeah, of course, right. Gotcha."

Jeremiah's hands shake so badly he can't pick his book back up. He hugs himself, fingernails digging into the fabric of his shirt to try and make his body stable again. 

_Never been kissed._

_Never been kissed._

_Never been kissed._

He _hates_ him. 

* * *

 

It's eleven minutes before Jeremiah decides to follow them. He's not following them because he's supposedly a creep or anything like that. He's following them because he needs to make sure Allison won't be in pieces. He left a note for their mother on the door of the van explaining the situation, so she won't worry about him if she comes back. 

The footsteps are imprinted into the ground, easy to follow into the thick of the trees. It's almost twilight, but not quite. He'll have enough time to find them. His mind races with the thought of what Jerome could do to her. It's an almost pleasant distraction—not that he enjoys the thought of the mutilation. No. Never. Not ever. He just enjoys not thinking about how Jerome treats him like he's less than nothing because that makes him angry. So he'll just think about Allison with a dozen gouges in her chest and her stomach and her face and her throat, bleeding out and writhing on the ground, covered in dirt, infecting her wounds. How awful. The poor girl. It would be awful if she were killed in a city where no one knew her name or her face or her story and her family, back in their hotel room three miles away from the parking site, wouldn't have had any idea what had happened to her. She'd just decay, laying in rot, twisted and disintegrating into the earth. 

How awful.   


It's still too hot outside. Jeremiah feels like he's the one decaying.

Jeremiah walks for longer than he wants to, feeling a little lost and alone and scared until he finally hears something human. Or. Well. Human by scientific definition alone. 

He clings to an oak tree trunk, watching Jerome rip open the front of Allison's dress.

"I've gotta get back to my room in this," Allison whimpers, a high blush on her cheeks. "Jerome, I don't really—"

"You do, though, don't you, Allie?" Jerome cuts off her whine with a kiss, swallowing her protest. 

_ He felt lighter than he'd ever felt in his life. His heart thumped in his chest, bursting against his ribcage. He was full of butterflies. Jerome slipped between his legs, giggling and pressing a flurry of kisses to his face. Jeremiah laughed and flushed pink, hazy and happy, warmth buzzing underneath his skin.  _

Allison swallows and lets out a sharp, shuddering breath. "I can't, I can't do this," she whispers, shaking her head. "I can't."

"I believe in you," Jerome says, his voice a sweet, mocking singsong. "We can do this together, Allie. Five, six, seven, eight, take it from the top." He pins Allison's wrists above her head against the bark of the tree. She turns her head, squeezing her eyes shut.

_ Jerome tilted his head and ran his tongue over Jeremiah's, deep and rich, sliding a hand up his shirt and tracing along Jeremiah's ribcage. Jeremiah sighed against him, his fingers pressing into Jerome's back. He wanted to feel skin on top of his own. He'd thought about how the same shade and same patterns of freckles would look next to his. He pulled at Jerome's shirt, drawing the hem up.  _

Allie cries quietly, her fear all too visible. Jeremiah can't imagine not trying to stow something like that away. Almost subconsciously, he presses the heel of his hand against his erection, biting his lip. He doesn't feel real. He's completely disgusted by Jerome's ability to force him into this headspace. Jerome holds Allison's wrists in one hand, the other pushing her bra up. He nips and kisses his way down Allison's neck, over her collarbone.

_ Jerome pulled Jeremiah's briefs off and nuzzled the space between his hips, kissing the skin underneath ginger curls. Jeremiah shut his eyes and bit down hard on the side of his hand, his breath trembling. He threaded his fingers in Jerome's hair, clenching tightly. Jerome curled his hand around the base of Jeremiah's cock, running his tongue along a vein and over the tip. Jeremiah let out a shivering gasp, his hips rolling up until Jerome shoved them back down, holding them in place. _

Jerome sucks Allison's nipple into his mouth and shoves his leg between her thighs. She pants, her face red and weepy, her makeup failing to do its job. "J-Jerome, please," she begs. "Please, I _can't_." 

"I know you can." Jerome bites the side of her breast and makes her cry out, a sound that he cuts off with a slap. "Don't," he hisses, yanking the skirt of her dress up. "I'll send you back to Mommy and Daddy in a lunchbox." 

_Jeremiah was very, very close. He felt tears prick his eyes and he moaned behind his hand, the other twisted in Jerome's hair. "I can't," he managed. "I'm gonna—Jerome, please—"_

_Jerome pulled his mouth off, out of breath and dripping. His hair was in disarray and his lips were red and bruised and shiny and his eyes danced. For once, Jeremiah liked how pleased he looked. Jeremiah exhaled, his shoulders shaking with his breath as he climbed across the bed and cupped Jerome’s face in his hands, pulling him in close and kissing him hard. He climbed into Jerome’s lap, his head a flurry with uncharacteristic affection and the sweet, sticky heaviness from all the Jack and Coke._

“Nothing underneath, huh?” Jerome laughs at Allison and she sobs, trying to kick him. “I knew you were a slut.”

Stricken and suddenly finding it hard to breathe, Jeremiah realizes, yeah, she does look a little like Mom. Sick, sick head, sick heart, sick sick sick. Jerome pulls Allison’s leg up, hitching it over his hip. She starts to scream and he claps a hand over her mouth. 

_Jeremiah clutched at a pillow, hiding his face in it, hoping it would keep him quiet. Quiet enough, at least. His fingernails scraped across it as a pathetic sound was torn from his chest. He wasn't used to the stretch or the burn yet and Jerome pulling the hair on the back of his head wasn't making any of this feel any better. Whatever they'd taken from their mother's vanity was not, in fact, pleasure-enhancing like the bottle had advertised._

_"Oh my God, go slower," Jeremiah groaned, his voice broken, muffled with the fabric. "It's too much, y-you're going too fast, you're—oh," he gasped out, his hips jerking as Jerome entwined locks of Jeremiah's hair around his fingers and changed his angle. Jeremiah's weak fingers dropped the pillow. Jerome laughed, not obnoxious or mean or loud, but actually kind of. . . really hot. It was warm and smug and breathless and that alone could've turned Jeremiah to melting wax, but now this actually felt good and he was dissolving. It felt like true love. He knew why their mother drank so much: it gave you symptoms of being in love and it helped you experience deeply pivotal moments in your life. Jeremiah wasn't a virgin anymore. Sweet sixteen and kissed at last, over and over and over by the only person who had ever truly understood him and his broken spark plug of a brain. His brother. His other half._

Jerome, _he thought, his heart fuller than he'd ever felt in his life. This felt right. This felt complete. He'd never thought of Jerome with genuine care and affection before. Jeremiah pulled Jerome down to kiss him, desperate to cling onto it. Maybe this was why people had sex._

Jeremiah can't see it, not well, not from this angle, so he doesn't know if Jerome is inside her yet. Jerome is a degenerate freak and a liar and a criminal. Allison chokes out another sob, struggling as best she can. 

"Allie, just so we understand each other," Jerome says, his voice excited just underneath the surface, glowing, "I don't rape girls." He jams his knee up between her legs and kicks her shin, ripping her arm to the side. Jeremiah freezes with his hand around his cock. Jerome lets Allison fall to the ground and she cries in agony, grabbing at herself. "I prefer to carry myself with a certain _dignity_  that I think a lot of bigshot murderers and crazies and politicians and other babysitters tend to lack." 

"Don't hurt me," Allison wails, trying to push herself up with little balance and receiving a kick to the face with heavy leather. She shrieks and grabs at her explosion of a nose, then the welt in her chest where Jerome kicks her again. 

_Jeremiah didn't hear the slam of the caravan door. He couldn't have, because he was making too much noise for something like that to cut through. His fingernails raked over Jerome's back and his cock leaked onto his stomach, his other hand curled around it to cut the ache. Jerome's hand was under his thigh, pushing it up high, going as deep as he could. The postage-stamp of a room filled with yellow lantern light as the door was flung open, stopping Jeremiah's heart so quickly that he was sure he was about to die._

_"What are you doing to my son!?" their mother screamed. "Get away from him! Get the hell off him!"_

Jerome grabs a fistful of Allison's hair, pulling her head off the ground and waving his beloved switchblade in her face. "This is what you get," he whispers. "This is what you get when whores like you treat family like it's nothing."

"I didn't do anything!" Allison screeches, tears pouring down her cheeks, flowing with the blood on her face. "Let me go, you fucking psycho!" 

Which is the moment Jeremiah is sure Jerome is about to kill her. He didn't know if he'd go through with it and he thought he'd just scare her. He's actually going to do it. Jeremiah feels abandoned in his body, like he's just watching a movie.

_"What the fuck is the matter with you!? My baby, my baby—Miah—" Lila was wracked with sobs, pulling Jerome off the bed, fake fingernails leaving dents in his arm. Jeremiah felt violently sick with fear and anxiety, unable to breathe. Lila slapped him hard enough that she left a mark on his cheek, her voice growing louder, a wretched cry that anyone on the campground could've heard. "You are not my son! This is not the child I raised!"_

_Jerome coughed and spluttered, clearly shaking. "W-well, see—maybe if you'd tried harder, I wouldn't be here fucking your son 'cause you didn't bother to get him a birthday present."_

"Not a psycho," Jerome says, grinning at her, already cracked. "Just came from a broken home, is all." He raises the switchblade high above his head and sinks it into Allison's chest. 

_"You can tell everyone where you got this, too! I want you to understand how this feels to me!"_

_Jeremiah could only see a sliver of it from where the door had been left open. But he could hear it better than he could see it. He'd never heard Jerome scream before. Not really scream, not like he was scared or in pain. It was utter anguish. Jeremiah felt six years old again, curled up in bed while he listened to Jerome cry with cat blood on his hands and his mother trying to teach him a lesson. But this was worse. This was worse than he could've ever imagined._

_Jerome screaming at their mother to stop was drowned out by the singe of the iron and her shouting over him. "You're sick and you're dangerous and I should've drowned you when I had the chance! You ruined him! You ruined my son!"_

Allison gurgles and chokes, blood spilling out of her mouth as her body convulses. Jerome drives the knife into her again and again, his breath dragging over his teeth, his eyes wide and bright. He's spraying himself with her, covered in her. Jeremiah's heart still refuses to beat in his chest. He's still hard. 

_"Get out!"_

_"I want to kiss him goodnight, you cunt!" Jerome yelled at Lila, the fight in him still lingering even though the burns on his back bled through the robe Lila had thrown at him. "It's his birthday and you forgot, you goddamn—"_

_"Get out! He doesn't belong to you! Find somewhere else to sleep and bleed to death, you waste of air!" Jeremiah could hear the shatter of glass and the slam of the door._

Jerome wipes the blade clean on the hem of Allison's dress, stumbling to his feet. Her finger twitches as her body's very last breath of life gives out. "Come out, come out, wherever you are, baby brother," he murmurs, his back to Jeremiah. "I know you liked the show."

Jeremiah's steps are unsteady and off-kilter. He swallows, trying to piece his head back together. "You didn't have to do that."

_Jeremiah's mother laid curled up on a chair with a bottle of wine, crying into the throw pillow one of the Lloyds made her. Jeremiah clutched Jerome's shirt to his face in bed, very nearly ready to pass out from the alcohol he'd already had. Or throw up. He could throw up on Jerome's shirt._

"'Course I did." Jerome brushes at the shirt he'll have to toss away. He sucks the mess off his fingers, watching Jeremiah's eyes. "You would've done the same thing, you know. I know you want her dead as much as I do."

"I—I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yeah, you do, you're smarter than either of us give you credit for." Jerome takes Jeremiah's wrist and gently presses the switchblade into it. "I know you want her dead," he murmurs, "and I have a plan." 

_Jeremiah threw up on Jerome's shirt._

_He didn't do it on purpose._


End file.
